TCP offloaders aim to sharpen BladeCenter

Both companies sell triple-function cards able to off-load TCP/IP networking, iSCSI storage and RDMA clustering traffic. IBM will now offer the NetXen 10 Gig SR adapter as an option on its x86-based System x servers, while the $895 (£450) Chelsio S320em-bc has been qualified by industry group Blade.org for the IBM BladeCenter - IBM already sells a NetXen 10 Gig adapter for BladeCenter, listing it at $899.

Chelsio said that its dual-port 10Gig mezzanine card is optimised for bladeserver storage applications. It can run both InfiniBand and Fibre Channel apps on Ethernet, and consumes just 16W, which Chelsio claimed makes it the lowest power card of its type.

The NetXen cards also support Linux Sockets Acceleration and are firmware-upgradable for when new protocols come along that need accelerating, that company said.

The two firms both argue that 10 Gigabit is the first generation of Ethernet that is able to run any and all networking applications.

"10 Gigabit Ethernet enables the convergence of storage, clustering, and server networking applications onto a single unified fabric," said Chelsio boss Kianoosh Naghshineh. "Our additional traffic management, classification, and virtualisation functions will further relieve the host CPU of the burden of all byte-touching operations at 10 Gig."